Tag Archives: germs

There are so many great blogs out there related to travel. Blogs about food, full-time RV life, historical landmarks in each city, state parks across the US, …etc. Some blogs give you insight on the best RV parks/cities for families with young children with a plethora of options to keep the kids entertained. Some give you great suggestions if you have pets. Of course, there are the blogs for the older crowd trying to keep busy as well as staying far far away from campers with kids….most of those can be found in Arizona.

Some blogs give advice to couples who may be tandem camping. There are even blogs out there which cater to specific activities. For example, if you love off-roading or four-wheeling, there are a lot of campgrounds in western California, Nevada, and Arizona with actual off-roading courses built right in. Some of them even have their own restaurants and convenience stores so you can hunker down and never leave your little oasis.

I considered, before we started this adventure, specializing in something. A food blog was out of the question. A. I don’t have the genetic makeup which will allow me to eat my way through the U.S. and be happy B. Nor do I have the energy to research, visit, and write a critique all the amazing food choices. And, although not necessarily in blog format, it’s already been done….thank you Anthony Bourdain.

I could have pulled from my various habits, like photography, knitting, writing, and working out…I wasn’t jazzed about doing a blog where I focused on the best campgrounds to get a great workout. That could get old quick and I am sure I would have to get into webcasting which doesn’t interest me at all. I don’t knit often enough to do a blog about the best campgrounds to knit and people watch. You can and should be able to take pictures anywhere…same goes for writing so neither of those ideas sounded appealing.

I just decided to continue writing about our lives on the road…it’s my favorite subject anyway.

But looking back with the information I have now, I am convinced I could write a fairly thorough blog detailing the best Urgent Cares each city has to offer. Or the cleanest, most kid-friendly, and efficient ERs out there.

Mississippi has a pretty good Urgent Care in Diamond Head. I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as kid-friendly or even clean but when I took Cecilia in for “clear drainage” from her right ear last Monday, they sure were efficient…and nice. Even more-so on her follow-up visit this past Monday.

I hate to compare other ERs to Newport, Vermont’s ER but I’ve never seen an ER look so immaculate, react so swiftly, and process the patient so efficiently. They are truly impressive. The ER in Gulfport, Mississippi was pretty clean, the doctor and Orthopedic Surgeon were able to see us within an hour of arriving…but it would have been unfair to compare the efficiency of the administration in Mississippi to that of Vermont’s. Some administrations simply aren’t concerned about efficiency.

So, when Phoebe broke her right wrist on Monday after falling off the monkey bars at the park playground, we were able to experience Gulfport’s Emergency Room first hand. As soon as we arrived, we were processed and asked to wait in any of the three available waiting rooms. We turned around and as always, my goal was to pick the one with the least amount of “sick” people.

The two on our right had patients who were close to hacking up a lung and there was a peculiar gentleman taking up an entire couch with his feet up and shirt way above his enormous hairy belly. The one to our left boasted of a family who were verbally accosting one another and it looked as if it was soon to escalate to a physical confrontation. So…we chose the deathly ill, scantily clad waiting room.

Great.

So just to recap our Monday, early in the morning, I drove Cecilia to the Urgent Care in Diamond Head approximately 25 miles north of our current campsite. Later in the afternoon (three hours later) we were heading back to the ER in Gulfport which was 45 miles north of our campsite. That’s a lot of back and forth driving from the same areas in one day…in other words, backtracking…this very thing would drive Greg to the brink of insanity.

We were in and out of the ER within a three-hour time period. The X-Ray showed yet another ‘green stick’ fracture on her right wrist. It was the same exact type of fracture, in the same exact place, on the opposite arm, as the last time in Vermont, 10 months ago. The Ortho wrapped her arm in loose material and settled it with a sling. We knew the drill: The material, which is not allowed to get wet, has to stay on her arm for three days to allow for the majority of the swelling to subside; In a couple of days, we return and she gets a hard cast.

Fast forward to the ‘hard cast fitting day’ and she is presented with a choice of fifteen colors to choose from. Pink, green, purple (which I for sure thought she would pick because its her fave color), green and pink camo, blue etc…She ended up choosing white. Luckily for her, it was a glow-in-the-dark cast.

Rewind to last night, when I woke up to check on her around the 3 a.m. hour. Imagine my surprise when I found her wide awake and proudly proclaiming, “I know why my cast isn’t glowing right now mommy…because the window shade is letting in light from the street lamp!!” At 3 a.m. I did not want to encourage her to stay up any longer, but I had to acknowledge the humor in the situation…here she was bright and early on a random Saturday morning trying to solve the mystery of the not-glowing ‘glowing cast’.

After I pulled the window shade down, we tested her glowing cast. She sighed a big joyous breath of air and settled her head on her pillow. As I tucked her back into bed and kissed her good night, I thought to myself, “I wouldn’t enjoy writing about anything else. These are the stories I want to tell. Our story.”

And of course, I have no pictures of Phoebe in her cast, because I have been too busy to take pictures of her cast. Those will have to come next week.

Have a great last week of April…where did that time go? Eleven months, right around the corner. Almost one whole year of being on the road. So hard to believe.